Hands off our fishermen, snide eco-warriors
One of the most poignant scenes in the battle for Brexit was the sight of multi-millionaire Bob Geldof with a gang of well-heeled, champagnequaffing mates on a boat on the Thames mocking a flotilla of working men worried about making a living under the scourge of the EU fishing laws. Even some on his own side had to admit that this ship of fools had done the Remain cause more harm than good.
You’d think that the liberal establishment would understand it’s not wise to take on the nation’s fisherfolk by now – but no. I’ve lived in the People’s Republic of Brighton and Hove for a quarter century and am used to woke nuttiness. Nevertheless, my surprise was extreme on waking up this week to discover that a Greenpeace ship was engaged in dropping huge boulders into the sea at the end of my street.
In theory it was a protest against the rather fun-sounding practice of “bottom-trawling” – a type of fishing in which weighted nets are dragged over the seabed – by attempting to close off 55 square miles of sea in a protected area of the English Channel. But in practice it was just another act of contempt for human beings who need to do anything as vulgar as make a living by those who are lucky enough to be well-rewarded for doing something they love. No one actively wishes ill towards sea anemones – we’ve all seen Finding Nemo. But would it be too much a leap of imagination for these self-righteous friends of starfish to attempt to put themselves in the shoes of their fellow humans for once? A spokesman for the fishing community described the action as “dangerous, illegal and irresponsible” and you’d have to be the owner of a sizeable trust fund in order to disagree. With pitch-perfect lack of empathy, each boulder had the name of a rich and famous supporter painted on it – Hugh FearnleyWhittingstall, Ranulph Fiennes – providing us with the grim spectacle of privileged people literally weaponising celebrity against people trying to earn a living.
It’s not sentimental to put the interests of fishermen before those of hermit crabs – just a recognition that an island nation has a special relationship with the sea, just like, say, Switzerland does with mountains. We sing hymns asking the Lord to look after those in peril on the sea. It was a key issue in our losing patience with the EU monolith. The RNLI unites us in awe, having saved some 140,000 lives – at a cost of 600 lives lost in service, by mostly unpaid volunteers.
How self-regarding and frivolous, compared to this, the ecologists appear – and how careless about human lives. As I write this, some well-bred numpty is twittering gaily on the radio: “One of the benefits of the pandemic is that we’ve all come to value nature more” – never mind that a few more birds showing off to the opposite sex in Surrey has come at the cost of untold human misery yet to come.
These Malthusian misanthropists will continue to be friends of the earth for one main reason: it’s been a damn good friend to them. As for the fishermen – let them eat fishcakes.